I have plenty of cards I have kicked aside from the Hidden Gems binder that fit into this look. Most of the time something is considered, but ultimately rejected, comes down to one simple word:
Cropping
In the world of digital graphics, cropping is removing outside areas of a photo or image. It helps focus the eye to what the artist wants you to see, frame the image, remove trash from the image or alter the aspect ratio. Sometimes, it's perfect. But on these examples, it's too much. For the Reddick, they did well to get most of him within the frame, and the most important parts, but chopped off a leg, and the glove is juuuuuust out of the inside border. On the DeJesus, we have a similar issue. Cropped just s fraction too close, so he has no feet and the Ultra logo covers part of the image. DeJesus would have done better pulled out just a bit, while the Reddick could have fared much better on a horizontal card (yeah - I know it's Archives, but go with it).
Sometimes, you can crop too much, thinking you are getting rid of excess garbage, but losing the best part of the subject.
Now, for music, I am going to start with a simple question: Ever hear the songs "Get Away" and "Broken" by Chicago and Tears For Fears, respectively? I'm fairly certain most of you have without really knowing it. But unless you own the songs, you probably won't hear them anytime soon on the radio. Maybe on WXRT here could your ears enjoy Broken. But you tend to not hear those songs lately because of a little thing called the "radio edit".
I've talked about radio edits before, specifically the fact the 60 plus seconds are cut from The Knacks "My Sharonna" when you tend to hear the song. Many songs have sections cut out so they play faster, allowing more commercials over the air. See, Get Away and Broken appear at the end of a couple very famous songs for each band:
If you listen to the end of each video, the song ends. But on the album, each song has a close to minute jam fest attached. Getaway highlights Chicago's horn section, which hearkens back to their earlier years as a jam band. For Tears For Fears, Broken is a small section of a live performance of the song tacked at the end. It's an actual song that appears just before Head Over Heels on their Songs From The Big Chair album. It's a shame you don't get to hear either over the airwaves, though.
It would have been nice if the Ultra logo would have been moved to the top right rather than the top left on the DeJesus card. I'm assuming all the logos were assigned to the same spot though.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard that Chicago song in forever. My parents would wear out Chicago's albums when I was growing up.
Spectacular post. I tie music and cards together all of the time... but never even considered radio edits and cropping. Nice call. I'm usually okay with the casual radio edit. However... the excessive cropping off the tip of a glove or the entire leg or two is terrible. C'mon Topps... what did these players ever do to you?
ReplyDeleteGreat songs. Hate when radio edits cut off a cool part of a song. A poorly cropt photo on a card sucks too.
ReplyDeleteI remember when the old WLIT would play Hard For Me To Say I'm Sorry and then fade out and start the next song before Get Away started. We as kids always hoped the DJ would mess up and let it play. I think the new Oldies station, METV.FM, did it as well.
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